What makes America the superlative nation, superior to even the rest of Western Civilization, hasn’t been lost, at least not truly. Despite the attempt by many to fundamentally transform it, there is a certain vital essence that still pervades American society and culture. We should seek to renew this, for it can only exist with constant renewal, not from some Earthly savior or great government scheme, but by the shared values and ways of the individuals who make up the American people.
More importantly, no one can “restore” what America never truly was, but some with it had been and could be in the future. This “restoration” is more European in spirit, regardless of the superficial American characteristics. Less a restoration than the draping of a skinsuit. One such new organization with plenty of tells that they are supportive of more foreign ways of structuring society is a group called the “American Restoration Project”.
One of the hallmarks of American civilization, and the broader Anglospheric one before that, was the rejection of the “Norman Yoke” and a recognition that the people and their rulers were not only separate and distinct, but in opposition to each other, and that either the government, be it a king or a parliament, must be yoked lest the people themselves become yoked. This is the very nature of the relationship, and not the outcome of a particular leadership class, nor is it fixable by selected a set of leaders to rule over the hoi polloi. Yet, this is the very attitude of this so-called restoration project, and it is a dead give-away when they talk not of leaders running government, but of society itself. This is socialism of the non-Marxist vein that has rotten Europe since America severed itself from the Old World.
But this social democracy mindset is not limited to that, and is quite collectivist. They claim that a “healthy society gives its people more than services. It gives them identity, shared purpose, and the conviction that their community is worth belonging to”. Except whence does society get these things from? Society is but a grouping of individual with individual wills and individual rights that share these things in common. It must come organically from the individual within society, for it can not be provided by some Volonte Generale or other such false god, since “society” created and produces nothing not stemming from the individual people themselves. We are not mere appendages of a “society” that some leadership elite can control and manipulate, as the history of socialism has aptly shown; nor is society “built” by a leadership class either by their own superiority or by channeling the Volonte Generale as if the people had a singular and motive will. When the very meaning of your life must be granted by your ruling overlords via “society”, then you are spiritually nothing more than a slave.
It is also a tell, that they speak broadly of a “Western Tradition”, but not of American exceptionally. The “restoration” they seek is not of what made America superior to the rest of Western Civilization, but to impost a non-American strain of the West, in particular a view shaped by a Europe that evolved after American independence, and moreso outside of the already extant differences between England and the continent; it is not a restoration but an imposition of foreign ideas from a foreign land from foreigners with whom we have no longer had any substantive shared history.
It is a further tell, that they seem not to accept that yes, a good amount of what makes America superior did come about from a confluence of unique and even happenstance events and myriad conditions. No, instead they declare that it as forged by people under a leadership class who, rather than serve under the rule of law in running the government, are shepherds who guide the people to their responsibilities. And they blame modern America on the proactive choices of a ruling class they deem wicked and weak, as if disrupting the default of virtue, while justifying their preferred proactive choices of a ruling class that would impose the superficiality they crave without the substance beyond the vague and nebulous, indicative of a Motte & Bailey trick.
They wrap themselves in Burke, but their hearts of a distinctly European vein of authoritarianism that grew out of the very veins of thought that Burke wrote against. To them, the current leadership class that rules over us have abandoned tradition in service to excess freedom, so a new class of rulers must arise to properly shepherd the people for their own good. They seek to impose a “common purpose” in order to restore “common habits”, be they imagined, real, or some fantasy mash-up of the two. For this, they desire a new aristocracy of idyllic heroes unconstrained by any rule or law in their shepherding of society.
This isn’t about what we have in common that defines us as a society and civilization, but a hyper-emphasis on a new ruling class. They outright believe that greatness can “not sustain itself”, but systems must be build that produce “the quality of people required to carry the work forward”—Ironically a New Soviet Man with fascist doctrine clothed in an American flag. Their obsession with the “Hero Cycle” makes it clear that their care is not for the people and our society, but a yearning for fantasy heroes.
You can not build a healthy civilization based on myth and misunderstanding of what made America great. America was built with the understanding that men were not angels and we can not be ruled by said angels, but rather we are a nation of imperfect human beings who can at best be governed by their fellow men whose imperfections are constrained rather than empowered in furtherance of some heroic fantasy. Neither can “society” shape itself, only individuals can, organically and individually coming together to live the greatness rather than from some controlling institution being used to mould the people like clay.
This is, in effect, nothing more than that so-called “Common Good Conservatism” peddled by the so-called “Postliberals” who, rather than protect American Heritage, seek to impost a superficial recreation of what they fancy to LARP.
